Abstract
M.Sc.
We live in a modern world in which visual perception has become an absolute
necessity. Navigating and walking around in a city without getting lost is a difficult
enough task when using all senses, but if you are visually disabled, this becomes a
near impossible task. All around us are signs, billboards, motorcars, buildings,
computers, and other similar signs of modern times, which are most effectively
observed visually. The next logical step in assisting the visually disabled to
experience the world around them more freely, is to make more effective use of the
technology that has created the shift to the visual world in the first place.
It now appears possible to design a framework to incorporate not only current, but
also future hardware and software into a solution to the above-mentioned problems.
Such a framework has to be flexible to allow it to keep up not only with hardware,
but software advances as well. Furthermore, it needs to take into account the needs
of a typical blind user.
One way of implementing this framework is to make use of a form of sensereplacement.
Where the visual sense is impaired, technology can be used to
analyze and interpret the visual world, obtain meaningful information from the
scene, and then re-route this information to another sense.
This dissertation is divided into three sections. The first section will provide an
overview of the rest of the dissertation. It will also investigate similar research that is
currently being undertaken, and provide a model for a possible solution to the
above-mentioned problems. The second section will provide the background study
needed to make informed decisions when implementing a prototype system. The
third section will investigate the implementation of a prototype model, as well as the
construction of a pilot project.